Post: #26

Politics..

Post: #27

(05-21-2013 04:06 AM)Balboa Wrote:  This could be a case of a girl genius. They've gotta be out there, even if there are far fewer of them than male geniuses due to the well-known greater clustering around the mean of female IQ.

However, I'd put my money on it being a case of a nice bit of teen research, no more earth-shaking than many others, but the award given to her as part of the pro-girl agenda.

And what self-respecting male would say "I'm going to set the world on fire"?

Every self-respecting male ought to say that.

Post: #28

Quote:To store the same amount of energy as a battery, you need much more space for capacitors. So by using capacitors instead of batteries, devices will be able to charge rapidly but they will be double or triple the size, maybe even larger, thanks to capacitors instead of batteries.

But I thought that the point of this invention was that she invented some kind of a denser, smaller capacitor (a so-called super-capacitor)? Wouldn't that be helpful? I am not an engineer, of course, just speculating.

That said, the article mentions that her capacitor has powered a LED light, the tiniest of energy users in the mechanical world, but it doesn't mention how big her capacitor was. Whether it could be shrunk or not is the big question.

Post: #29

"The supercapacitor, she explains on CBS San Francisco, is “basically an energy source device that can hold a lot of energy in a small amount of volume.”

A capacitor is not an energy source. It is a device to store/transport energy generated by another device.

methinks this 'inventor' was daddy's little girl.

Post: #30

(05-21-2013 01:46 PM)Hobnob Wrote:  "The supercapacitor, she explains on CBS San Francisco, is “basically an energy source device that can hold a lot of energy in a small amount of volume.”

A capacitor is not an energy source. It is a device to store/transport energy generated by another device.

methinks this 'inventor' was daddy's little girl.

Yup, hell I remember my science fair project was on magnets. Yet at that point I still didn't understand how a magnet could exert force without an apparent power source. It wasn't until college that I understood that it's a potential energy field, and the energy came from pulling the attracted object away from the magnet. (Same as picking up a rock and dropping it. The gravity pulling the rock to the ground required you to use energy to pull it away from the ground picking it up in the first place.)

These wunderkind stories are suspicious precisely because while teenagers can be exceptionally bright, they're still lacking enough experience and knowledge to apply that intelligence in creating something new. That's why scientists and inventors seem to make all their big contributions in their 20's and 30's. Young enough to innovate, but old enough to have a base of knowledge.

Post: #31

wrong thread